Neil Young pi#ses on Nashville

Editor’s Note: “Underground Nashville” covers artists, authors, musicians, poets, political figures, and other compelling people and happenings not typically covered by the mainstream Nashville media. It also presents reflections and commentary from an underground/indie perspective. As I told ‘The Tennessean’ in 2008, “since moving to Nashville twenty-five years ago, I have met people whose lives do not remotely reflect the caricature of what many outside our city presume to be a ‘Nashvillian’ or the Nashville experience.” “Underground Nashville” thus explores the soul of the city, not its surface—offering “thoughts from the shadows of a great American city.”

Dave Carew

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Neil Young pi#ses on Nashville

By Dave Carew

What is it with these washed-up rock stars? Do they NEVER feel they’ve hosed the public enough? Do they NEVER feel they made enough coin?

Latest Exhibit A: The Tennessean is reporting Neil Young will be performing at the Ryman Auditorium solo on June 1. Great news, right? I would have thought so, since I own more Neil Young CDs, DVD’s, and books that you can shake a stick at. Then I looked at the price tag of this (presumably) nothing-but-guitar-and-vocal event. You ready for this? Cheapest seat: $92. Decent seat: $127.

Politicians, Wall Street, and other crooks put The Average Guy’s economy in the toilet…people who work hard and play by the rules are hurting everywhere…and this is how Neil Young responds. I hope on June 1 Neil’s looking over the footlights at rows and rows of empty pews. I know it will never happen. But it would be just.

David M. (Dave) Carew is editor of “Underground Nashville” and the author of the novels “Everything Means Nothing to Me: A Novel of Underground Nashville” and “Voice from the Gutter.” He also is a freelance publicist and copywriter.